Heikki Linnakangas <heikki@localhost.vmware.com> writes: > In general, I'm not convinced this patch is worth the trouble. The > speedup isn't all that great; manipulating large arrays in PL/pgSQL is > still so slow that if you care about performance you'll want to rewrite > your function in some other language or use temporary tables. And you > only get a gain with arrays of fixed-length element type with no NULLs.
> So I think we should drop this patch in its current form. If we want to > make array manipulation in PL/pgSQL, I think we'll have to do something > similar to how we handle "row" variables, or something else entirely.
I think that this area would be a fruitful place to make use of the noncontiguous datatype storage ideas that we were discussing with the PostGIS guys recently. I agree that tackling it in the context of plpgsql alone is not a good way to go at it.
I'm not saying this in a vacuum of information, either. Some of the guys at Salesforce have been poking at noncontiguous storage for arrays and have gotten nice speedups --- but their patch is for plpgsql only and only addresses arrays, which makes it enough of a kluge that I've not wanted to bring it to the community. I think we should work towards a general solution instead.
I am for general solution (because these issues are good performance traps), but a early particular solution can be valuable for lot of users too - mainly if general solution can carry in two, three years horizon
